🚨 DSA’s Future Leaders Say the Organization Is White Supremacist, Paternalistic, and Protecting Abusers

This Young Democratic Socialists of America meeting was really something.

These candidates are running for seats on YDSA’s national leadership body and could become some of DSA’s future leaders. Yet much of the discussion focused on what they described as the organization’s entrenched problems with white supremacy, patriarchy, anti-Blackness, racism, harassment, abusers, and its reputation as “five white guys sitting around and reading theory.”

The candidates did not confine these criticisms to a few isolated chapters. They described whiteness, racism, and “white-centered organizational practices” as problems extending across local YDSA chapters, YDSA’s national structures, and the broader DSA organization.

I do not generally think it is fair to reduce DSA to simply a “white organization.” Its membership and culture can vary considerably by chapter and region. I would describe the organization more broadly as overeducated, downwardly mobile, and arguably elitist.

That said, DSA’s national leadership does play some remarkably vicious internal games, conduct that Cliff Connolly has described as “bureaucratic freakery.” Perhaps that is the deeper dysfunction these aspiring leaders are picking up on, even if they interpret it primarily through the language of whiteness and white supremacy.

But it is still remarkable to hear so many aspiring DSA leaders portray both YDSA and the national organization as fundamentally shaped by white supremacy.

Stick around until the end to hear yours truly mentioned. Although this call did not include the YDSA co-chair candidates, it is important to remember that YDSA’s governing body and co-chairs help shape campus organizing nationwide. The co-chairs also serve on DSA’s National Political Committee.

https://x.com/thestustustudio/status/2071407384644161849

🚨 Meet the “Abolish Rent” Ideologue Teaching DSA Tenant Organizers How to Wage War on Landlords

Tracy Rosenthal co-founded the Los Angeles Tenants Union, helps politically educate DSA tenant organizers, and is currently on rent strike in New York City.

In this supercut, Rosenthal says tenants pay rent “at the barrel of a gun,” describes withholding rent as a “liberatory vision of home,” and explains how movement lawyers can use the legal system to buy tenants time.

She also endorses tactics including camping outside a landlord’s home, leaving bad Yelp reviews of their other businesses, and crashing family weddings.

As you will see, Rosenthal radically frames the relationship between property owners and tenants as inherently exploitative.

I am certainly sympathetic to anyone dealing with a bad landlord. But this goes far beyond protecting tenants from abuse. It treats the landlord-tenant relationship itself as illegitimate and pushes organizing tactics to an extreme.

Rosenthal’s ideology and organizing model increasingly permeate DSA’s tenant movement. Stick around for even more clips! Tracy Rosenthal sees the landlord-tenant relationship itself as inherently based on “exploitation and domination.”

Over four minutes, Rosenthal describes rent as a “fine,” a “trap,” a “tribute,” and ultimately a “ransom” paid “at the barrel of a gun.”

She argues that landlords “hoard” the places where people can live and generally acquired that property only because they, their parents, or their grandparents had more money than their tenants.

Her framing assumes that a tenant’s need for housing gives them a superior claim to the property, while largely erasing the owner’s rights and the tenant’s freedom to rent elsewhere or move.

Paying rent, therefore, is not presented as a contractual exchange between a property owner and tenant. It is portrayed as exploitation enforced by the threat of state violence.

This is the ideological foundation of Rosenthal’s worldview and the logic she uses to justify the tactics that follow.

🚨 Media figures rushed to fact-check Trump by insisting Democratic Socialism is not Communism.

But a majority of DSA’s national leadership is shaped by Communists, Marxist-Leninists, and members who see the org as fertile ground for radicalization.

My latest for @CityJournal! @CityJournal The real issue is that much of the media still seems unwilling to seriously engage with DSA, read what its caucuses publish, or understand the organization on its own terms, even as it continues to punch far above its weight. city-journal.org/article/democr…

🚨 DSA’s Democratic Party Host Body

When DSA uses the Democratic ballot line to primary actual Democrats, that’s the party surrogate model in full effect.

DSA is using the Democratic Party’s ballot line and party name while building what it hopes will become a separate socialist party inside it, whether that ends in a breakaway, a takeover, or DSA being forced out.

DSA’s euphemism for this is the “party surrogate model.” A more honest term is political parasitism, with the Democratic Party serving as the host body.

That’s why I always think of the xenomorph chestburster from Alien when describing this. DSA can dress it up however it wants, but the model is still built around using the host until it is strong enough to burst out. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to DSA co-chair Siddique explain DSA’s party surrogate model himself, including the risk that Democrats may eventually try to push DSA out.

“We are trying to build the party, and in many ways we’re already doing it.”

🚨 DSA’s top leadership just adopted a platform calling to abolish the Senate, replace the president and Supreme Court, abolish the “carceral forces” of the state, grant amnesty to all illegal immigrants, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

My latest for @CityJournal! This is one of those articles where the platform is so wild it is almost impossible to give every detail the attention it deserves.

DSA wants to defund the Department of War, and somehow that does not even make the top five craziest parts.
city-journal.org/article/democr…

🧵 DSA says its Red Rabbits initiative is about “security.” But according to its own authorizing resolution, the project is preparing for a “national uprising against federal agents and police brutality.”

A recent panel showed what that means in practice.

“Takedowns on intersections,” training where participants practiced being pepper-sprayed, firearm-safety training, protest marshalling, umbrellas and signs to block “fascists,” and direct-action support for Palestine and immigrant-justice groups.

The legal-risk issue was obvious enough that even the panelists kept circling it. They talked about compliance, liability, tax purposes, and how far DSA could push this without putting the organization at risk.

One organizer even described keeping a project DSA-sponsored but not fully DSA-run, so the fallout would not “come back to the DSA.”

My latest for @CityJournal! This is my second look at the Red Rabbits as the project continues to evolve.

I genuinely think this is one of the most important aspects of the DSA to understand, especially as it keeps racking up wins nationwide and pushing more candidates into office.
city-journal.org/article/democr…

I would love to be a fly on the wall for this event happening today in Seattle, hosted by Seattle Revolutionary Youth.

What makes this group especially wild is that they openly try to recruit kids as young as middle schoolers.

As you can see from the framing, “Why is revolution inevitable?,” this is not exactly subtle. It looks like a gateway into much crazier politics and a pretty obvious attempt to groom young kids into radicals. I would also wager this is being held at a public library, which gives younger attendees the easiest possible cover story: “I’m just going to the library after school.”

These youth activist groups in Seattle routinely use libraries and other public spaces for events like this, which makes the whole thing look much more normal and accessible to kids than it really should be.

🚨 Why Is Sanctioned Iranian State Media Filming in Washington, D.C.?

Not to be a stickler for the rules, but Press TV has been sanctioned since September 2023, so I find it pretty remarkable to see a PressTV branded microphone operating in Washington, D.C. while interviewing American far-left activists.

Mind you, this does not automatically prove a sanctions violation. Protected speech is still protected. But things get much murkier if any U.S. person is providing services that help Press TV create content after its designation.

And one of the people being interviewed here is Ermiya Fanaeian, a National Network on Cuba co-chair who has also been involved with Freedom Road Socialist Organization and Armed Queers SLC. Armed Queers SLC later drew scrutiny in connection with the investigation into Tyler Robinson, the alleged Charlie Kirk assassin.

At minimum, this raises some serious questions worth asking. Who is operating Press TV-branded interviews inside Washington, D.C., and is anyone in the United States helping a sanctioned Iranian state media outlet create content? Everything you need to know about Fanaeian is in this clip, bragging about how these Cuba delegations leveled up “her” organizing game.

Actually, scratch that. I’ve got an even spicier clip for you.

https://x.com/thestustustudio/status/2023579788561027242

🧵 Two graphics from the new @ncri_io report on Medea Benjamin and her $48 million foundation have been stuck in my head.

The report, Following the Benjamins, maps an alleged Iran-aligned influence network operating outside state oversight in Florida, including the money flows, organizational ties, and documented Press TV contact with U.S.-based activists.

One graphic shows the broader financial and activist network. The other shows how many documented calls various American activists received from Iranian state media.
@ncri_io Here is John Parker, who reportedly fielded 57 calls from PressTV, speaking with Maduro.

Parker keeps running for office on California’s Peace and Freedom Party ballot, and on Tuesday he lost yet another race, this time in the primary for District 37.

https://x.com/thestustustudio/status/1999601912166121710

🧵 Cox Media heir Fergie Chambers says his job is to move his family’s wealth into revolutionary organizing.

That made him a target for Neville Roy Singham’s network, which tried to bring him into its orbit with plans for what Chambers described as a “second People’s Forum.”

But the relationship blew up over differing views on the necessity of direct action, leading Fergie to start spilling secrets about what he says sits at the center of the entire Singham network, the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

If you want the juicy details of what it’s like to be courted by the Singham network, and why Fergie may have just shown Congress where to investigate next, go read my latest at @CityJournal! This was an insanely fun piece to write, but it had to be written for readers who may not know every name in the Singham orbit. Click through the links, because Fergie’s tweets are the real treasure map here. Enjoy!
city-journal.org/article/jim-fe…

🚨 Hasan’s Marxist Agitprop Masterclass

Everything about this superclip is mandatory viewing if you want to understand DSA and Hasan’s alliance with the organization.

First, DSA is not framed as some slightly more progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Hasan describes it as “directionally on the diametrical opposite side of the political spectrum” from the “liberal capitalist Democratic Party.”

Second, Hasan zeroes in on what he sees as the problem with Americans. They “do not have class consciousness” and “do not have political education.” And without those things, “you can’t have organizing on the basis of class.”

So what is the solution for Hasan?

“To foment class consciousness and to engage in agitative propaganda, as is the Marxist tradition.”

He then says elections are “one of the most viable routes to reach the masses.”

In other words, when DSA candidates go on Hasan’s stream, this is not a standard interview. He sees it as part of the Marxist tradition of agitprop, using his platform to create political action, build class consciousness, and bring people into DSA.

Third, he is completely right about the DSA growth model. He says that whenever you get “an AOC style figure or Zahra Mamdani,” DSA’s ranks “explode” with new paying members.

And fourth, the caucus part is hilarious. Hasan explains that DSA is “a massive institution with many different caucuses,” all “constantly fighting one another.” But when asked to choose between them, he says it is like “picking favorite children.”

I don’t think Hasan is alone in giving a blanket answer like that, but if DSA were principled, it would have to grapple with the fact that the organization has some genuinely insane caucuses, including ones that have put out statements in support of Elias Rodriguez. I would say Liberation Caucus is probably the craziest caucus inside DSA.

And here is Hasan with DSA Emerge, another DSA caucus that “just likes a little bit of Mao.”

https://x.com/thestustustudio/status/1953990440006345107

🧵 One of DSA’s top national figures, National Political Committee co-chair Ashik Siddique, sat down with Brazil’s Perseu Abramo Foundation and laid out a pretty clear vision for where DSA sees itself right now.

DSA is an organization waiting to become a political party in all but name, building local political machines across the country while using elected office and street movements to create conflict with Democrats, Republicans, corporations, and billionaires.

DSA candidates should “stand up with movements on the streets,” members should remain “agitational,” and the organization should be willing to antagonize Democratic officials like New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

Understandably, DSA sees the election of Zohran Mamdani in New York City as a huge victory. But Siddique really hammers that NYC DSA is also the model to replicate in all 50 states because it did not even exist nine years ago.

The future Siddique painted is one where DSA forces its way into power by playing foil to both Democrats and Republicans, while slowly building the infrastructure and elected bloc of a national political party. What Siddique is describing here is DSA’s inside/outside strategy.

On the outside, you have the movement: the activists, the street pressure, the screaming protesters, and the DSA machine keeping the demands alive.

On the inside, you have Zohran smiling, negotiating, and asking nicely.

It is basically political good cop, bad cop.

Mamdani can maintain the polite public relationship with Gov. Kathy Hochul, while DSA keeps “agitating” and being “very antagonistic” toward her from the outside.

🧵 I watched Hasan’s Cuba doc so you don’t have to

A regular Hasan viewer asked me to watch his Cuba documentary, seemingly because it would change my mind. It actually did the opposite.

We are still waiting to learn more about the reported OFAC probe into the Nuestra América Cuba convoy, which Fox says involves as many as 40 Americans, including Hasan Piker.

But this is the “journalism” Hasan is going to point to as proof that his Cuba trip was legitimate.

The medical missions are presented as pure humanitarian virtue, with no serious scrutiny of the forced-labor allegations, how much of the doctors’ pay the regime keeps, or whether host countries are receiving fully accredited care.

Cuba’s blackout-ridden, Soviet-era power grid becomes a story about American cruelty and heroic solar panels from China, not the regime’s decades of mismanagement.

The medical “miracle cures” get the soft-touch treatment too, with no real interrogation of what has actually been proven, what is still experimental, and what is just regime hype.

And the doc literally ends with a close-up on The People’s Forum, CODEPINK, a Fidel Castro billboard reading “Fidel, faithful to your legacy,” as Hasan repeats the revolutionary slogan “Patria o muerte, venceremos.”

But wait, there’s more. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.

Almost 15% of the entire documentary is just Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Carlos F. de Cossio, talking largely uninterrupted.

🚨 Manolo’s Cuba “Aid” Pitch Turns Into a Call for Political Upheaval Inside America

In an interview yesterday from Havana, The People’s Forum executive director Manolo de los Santos essentially said material aid is not what Cuba needs most right now.

What will “help Cuba the most,” he says, is “massive mobilization” inside the United States to “change the reality within the United States.” He says that would also help Mexico, Iran, and “the people of the world.”

You need a far-left dictionary to know what Manolo means by “massive mobilization” and “reality,” but he is pretty clearly calling for a mass uprising to change America’s political reality. This fits Manolo’s broader thesis. America has mass mobilizations, but never the revolution, because there is no vanguard to discipline the chaos and turn it into power.

That sounds insane to say out loud, but listen to him say it himself.

https://x.com/thestustustudio/status/1992654442957545792

🚨 Hasan Names Singham, PSL, ANSWER, and Code Pink in One Breath

On stream today, Hasan Piker discussed the reported Treasury scrutiny and said the broader target is “probably Singham” and “his operation,” naming PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation), ANSWER Coalition, Code Pink, and “anything that he has ever financed.”

He then acknowledged that Roy Singham lives in China and has been “a funding vehicle” for political movements and activism in the United States.

That is exactly why this matters.

This was never just about one influencer’s Cuba trip. It is about the Singham-linked ecosystem, the groups it funds, the delegations it supports, and the political operations built around them.

Hasan didn’t refute the network. He mapped it. Singham usually stays far from the public-facing side of the operation. His influence runs through subordinates, funding channels, and the groups orbiting his network.

That’s why it stands out when people inside that ecosystem mention him directly.

https://x.com/thestustustudio/status/2038397703663575201

🧵 Medea Benjamin of Code Pink is reportedly on the subpoena list over the Nuestra América Cuba convoy, and honestly, I would love to know the finances behind what she says here.

In one clip, she says you can’t blame the Cuban government until the “blockade” is lifted, encourages Americans to travel to Cuba and spend money, praises Cuba’s China-backed solar buildout, directs donations to Global Health Partners, Code Pink, and Pastors for Peace, invokes Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, touts Cuba’s medical system, and says there is “no reason” to treat Cuba differently just because it is communist.

She also says they have been sending “thousands of pounds” of medicine and food every two weeks, with another 2,500 pounds going out.

That is exactly the kind of thing investigators should want to understand. Who funded it? Who bought it? Who transported it? Who received it? What licenses covered it? And how much money moved through this “humanitarian” pipeline?

Stick around for some Medea lore and other fascinating moments. Medea Benjamin says she first went to Cuba in 1979, ended up living there for three years, married a Cuban, and had a child there.

She says Cuban doctors told her there was “no malnutrition in Cuba,” that Cuba’s problem was “obesity,” and that the only “malnourished” child she saw was supposedly her own.

Then she calls the late 1970s and 1980s Cuba’s “good old days,” when Soviet support helped counteract U.S. sanctions.

This is the lens she brings to Cuba, not skepticism, not accountability, but decades of revolutionary nostalgia.

🚨 BREAKING: Hasan Piker addressed the reported Treasury investigation on his livestream, and even he admits the news is “not great.”

“I’m not gonna lie to you guys. It’s not great. The news is not great, OK? I mean, it’s bullshit, but still not great that they’re after your boy. They’re up my ass.”

He then joked with viewers chanting “free me,” responding:

“Free me, free me. I can’t believe I’m saying that.”

For all the bravado, Hasan clearly understands this is serious. Hasan Piker says he found out about the reported federal subpoena from a Fox News producer, not from the government.

According to Hasan, he got a voicemail saying he had been subpoenaed and asking for comment. Before he could respond, the article was already on the timeline.

“I got a text message, or rather a voicemail, from a Fox News producer saying that I had been subpoenaed by the federal government.”

“Before I could even respond to the journalist, an article materialized on the timeline.”“Let’s just say that kind of fucked my whole night up.”

The funniest part is that even after learning he was reportedly in federal subpoena territory, Hasan says he still made time for “a little tub sesh.”

Now that Treasury is reportedly probing Medea Benjamin and Hasan Piker over the Cuba convoy, Medea’s own report-back from the Nuestra América Convoy deserves another look.

The reported probe is tied to possible Cuba sanctions and travel violations, with OFAC involved. And in barely three minutes, Medea practically narrates the subpoena checklist herself:

A planning meeting in Colombia with Progressive International’s David Adler and other activists. Gaza flotilla veterans. Fourteen to twenty tons of aid. More shipments coming. Solar panels. Pacemakers. Travel pipelines into Cuba. And explicit encouragement for Americans to go there and spend dollars.

Then come the little IYKYK details: praise for Gerardo Hernández of the Cuban Five, plus solidarity and travel coordination with ICAP.

By their own telling, this was never just “humanitarian aid.” It was material aid, travel, money, propaganda, and political coordination wrapped into one Cuba operation. You might be asking: “The Colombia meeting?”

Benjamin is referring to this wild Progressive International gathering in Colombia — the kind of event that brought together DSA electeds, Bill de Blasio, and a broader cast of the international left.

https://x.com/thestustustudio/status/2015928544107327773

🧵 What a rough night for Nithya Raman.

Hasan Piker put the LA mayoral candidate and DSA member through a full-on struggle session over her record, repeatedly pressing her to explain where she had fallen short of the movement line.

And honestly, even as a conservative, I felt bad for her. This was brutal.

One flashpoint was a DSA criticism over Raman’s role in a city resolution tied to the UTLA BDS fight. But the exchange was bigger than that. This was not a good-faith interview. It was an ideological audit.

Raman mostly tried to answer politically. She came to DSA through housing and homelessness, said this was not her area of expertise, said she had learned more, and promised she was “committed to learning more.”

Stick around for more, because by the end of this even Hasan’s chat wanted his head. This is where Piker's “interview” really became a purity test.

“Do you believe Israel has a right to exist in its current form as an ethnostate that’s currently being investigated for genocide at the International Court of Justice?”

Raman answered, “Yes, I do believe that Israel has a right to exist,” but added that she wants countries to operate “without apartheid” and “with equality in their borders.”

Hasan immediately followed up: “Do you believe that Israel is an apartheid state then?”

Raman said, “I think that it is, yeah.”

Then Hasan brought up her 2024 censure from DSA-LA over accepting the Democrats for Israel LA endorsement, asking whether, “knowing what we know now and seeing the videos of Gaza in ruins,” she would still seek it out.

Raman said, “I wouldn’t seek it out now,” pointed to her ceasefire resolution, and then tried to bring the conversation back to what a mayor actually does: keeping Angelenos safe, protecting protest rights, and pushing back against both antisemitism and Islamophobia.

🚨 Los Angeles Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez says her office built a “community defense network” to respond to federal immigration raids.

She also says her office invested $500,000 in rental assistance and $400,000 in food assistance, argues DSA should become a bigger “political home,” and claims LA activists were “literally battling to prevent martial law.”

At a recent DSA-LA panel, “socialists in office” from Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minnesota explained how they use public office to advance movement politics, anti-ICE organizing, mutual aid, and attacks on the Democratic establishment.

I break it all down in my latest for @CityJournal! These officials aren’t just doing constituent service. They’re using public office to build and protect DSA-aligned movements, steering resources, legal support, and government legitimacy toward a narrower activist base. That’s clientelism. city-journal.org/article/democr…

📰 My latest for @CityJournal!

Sunrise’s rebrand is not subtle. The group now wants to build the “muscle of non-cooperation,” escalate student walkouts, target companies linked to ICE, and move toward mass student strikes in 2027 and a general strike in 2028. @CityJournal I’ve been buried and haven’t had time to cut a promo video for this article.

It’s a great look at where the Sunrise Movement is in 2026. Climate activism has taken a back seat to “getting rid of the authoritarian government we’re in.” city-journal.org/article/sunris…